Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 124923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
My stomach turns to lead, my heart starting to race. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” she says quickly, shaking her head. “I screamed. He jumped up, claimed he was drunk and got the wrong room.” She gives a bitter laugh. “Her room was on the opposite side of the house.”
“Did you tell her?”
“Not that time. I convinced myself that I was making a big deal about nothing. That she’d only blame me or call me dramatic. Then a couple weeks later, it happened again. Only this time, I woke up to his hand up my shirt.”
I clench my jaw, trying to keep my reaction under control until she gets through her story.
“That time, I kneed him in the balls.” Her lips pull into a small smile. “Hard.”
“What’s his name?”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“The fuck it doesn’t. Tell me.”
“Cameron,” she relents. “Some attorney with a god complex because he owns a detention facility.”
I commit the name to memory, making a mental note to look him up as soon as possible.
“The second time, I did tell my mom. He had the same story about being drunk and confused. She called me a liar. Gave me the silent treatment for weeks. She looked at me like…she resented me. Like it was my fault.”
I reach over to cover her fidgeting hands with one of mine. She holds on to my fingers instead of her own, her thumb rubbing across my knuckles.
“All this time, I thought she didn’t believe me, and I was so mad at her for it,” she continues. “But tonight, she had one too many glasses of wine and let it slip that she knew all along. She fucking knew. And she still kept him around. And God, that’s so much worse than not believing me.”
The sadness in her voice, in her eyes, is almost too much to bear, so I try to keep my anger in check, offering up some kind of explanation that might take away an ounce of her hurt. “Maybe she was in denial. Maybe she—”
“He offered her money to let him fuck me, Holden. I was fourteen years old.” Her tone is harsh, eyes turning hard with the blunt truth. “Then she acted like Mother Teresa for not allowing it. Didn’t stop her from seeing him, though.”
What the fuck? I grind my teeth together, my entire body radiating with red-hot rage. At her poor excuse for a mother for letting this man around her daughter, at the man himself for thinking he could touch a hair on her head, at her father for not being there. They all fucking failed her.
“Where was your dad in all this?”
She lifts a shoulder, trying to appear unaffected. “He tried to see me for a while after they split, but I think my mom made the back and forth so miserable and impossible that it eventually just…wasn’t worth the fight anymore.”
I hear what she’s not saying. That she wasn’t worth the fight. It couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“I think a part of me was afraid to tell him. My mom didn’t care when I tried to tell her. If he didn’t care either,” she stops, shaking her head as she bats a tear away as if she’s angry at it for falling.
“It was safer to keep it to yourself than to risk the pain of not being believed again,” I finish for her. Her answering nod is almost imperceptible.
“Or worse, if he believed me and didn’t care enough to do anything about it. It’s funny,” she muses. “I always thought he was the bad guy for leaving me. Even when my mom treated me horribly, I loved her so much. I defended her. Because she was there. Then, as I got older, I realized the way she acted, the things she said, the things she did. None of it was normal. It wasn’t love. It was…control.”
The more Valen opens up to me, the more I realize how similar we really are underneath it all. We both know what it’s like to be discarded by the people who are supposed to love us most. We just cope in different ways.
She swipes her tears away and takes a fortifying breath. “Anyway, thanks for letting me come over. I should probably—”
I cut her off before she can finish that sentence. I can tell from the look in her eyes alone that she’s ready to bolt. “You’re not going anywhere. If I have to tie you to this bed, I will.”
“Holden, I can’t stay here, and all my stuff’s still at my mom’s, anyway.”
“Why the fuck not? No one else is here. We’ll get some sleep, then in the morning, I’ll go with you to get your shit.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I think it’s a great idea,” I counter. I tug her down to lie next to me. She doesn’t resist when I wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her closer until her back is pressed firmly against my chest. At first, neither one of us speaks. I know Valen enough to know that opening up to people isn’t something she does often, and for some reason, it makes me want do the same. The only problem is, I’m not exactly used to talking about my feelings either. I don’t know where to start, so I opt for the obvious.